C.A. Savage initially created the prints without any specific plan for how they would be shared. Her goal was simply to find sustained inspiration from the stories she heard each month. But as the year of printmaking neared completion, the question inevitably raised its head. What next?
Image by Laurence Mason-Guetta
My answer – and I’m very glad that everyone came along with me on this – has been to engage with each of the original storytellers. To have them reflect, in words, the moment of the story they see expressed in the print, as well as provide context with a brief written description of the show.
As a result, each piece is a reciprocal, collaborative creation. From storytelling show, to print, to digital image, to audio, to online release.
The digital images were created by photographer @laurence__mg. I worked on combining the storytellers audio with dynamic shots of the prints, creating video shorts that highlight the textures of the collagraphy. The results of this grand collaboration will be shared online through the Autumn of 2022. The gallery will then be available as a physical installation and we hope to tour in 2023.
“When things are uncertain, stories come in.” – Nick Hennessey
Beyond Words is an online gallery. It’s a year of stories expressed as images, a collaboration by more than a dozen creatives across artforms. Running from 6th September 2022 through the Autumn, we hope you’ll come with us as we share our journey.
The Savage Studio
Here’s C.A. Savage, our printmaker, to introduce the work and open the gallery in her own words:
“Having lost my partner and finding my art practice as a fine art printmaker had stalled, I became Artist in Residence at Beeston Tales, a thriving storytelling club in Beeston, Nottingham, with the challenge to make one print a month, based on that month’s storyteller, for one year.
Storytellers come from all over Britain to Beeston. The stories told come from the treasure of stories from all the nations and traditions of the world. It resulted in a body of 12 prints and led to much development of my usual technique of collagraph. I will outline for each print how I developed the work.
This is a collaborative project: Mike Payton and @timralphs, storytellers and hosts of Beeston Tales, have worked alongside me to bring this project together, in the face of many challenges, and refocus it online after Lockdown meant no ‘real world’ event. They are two of the twelve storytellers who have now generously retold extracts from their original story. You will hear the voices of these twelve here. They have also shared a precis of the story itself, the bare bones if you like. You can follow us as we post one print and one storyteller a week through the Autumn of 2022.”
For those of you not on my mailing list, here’s the email I sent out this month. Details of how you could sign up are at the bottom.
Fellow Story Lovers,
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, Happy New Year. I appreciate it’s a bit late for that now – you’ve almost certainly already got the decorations down, assuming you had any. Some of the more organised among you will be making plans for the Summer. Best of luck to you. But Happy New Year all the same and I hope 2021 unfolds rich in blessings. For those of you who like to skim headlines, in this email you’ll find:
Advance notice of a spooky upcoming online Experiment with Adverse Camber – Seven Uncanny Candles (save the date 12th February).
Details of regular fixtures at Beeston Tales and The Storytellers Bookclub.
A Reflective Bit on 2020. (Something of a downer so feel free to skip.)
I’m not much for making profound statements. I prefer the specificity of stories – this happened, to this one person, once upon a time – over the generality of aphorisms or attempts at universal truth. Having said that, I do want to share some wisdom that has been a consolation to me over the past year. As I have had to assure a few people lately, it’s not compulsory to have had a tough time in 2020, but I will confess that I’ve found last year tough, lonely, full of disrupted plans, bereavement and the constant awareness that things have been a lot worse for lots of other people.
Earlier this year, I was introduced to the concept of “ambiguous grief” by Gina, a wonderful woman who works in a charity that supports the families of missing people. The pain those families feel is akin to the pain of bereavement, but with the added complexity of not knowing. Not knowing if their loved ones are coming back. Not knowing what has happened to them. Hope, pain, confusion and fear interlace.
‘Ambiguous grief’ describes our response to any loss we can not understand or qualify, without closure or clear expectation of what will happen next. That could be the pain of a loved one with dementia, a loss of faith or just an inability to imagine where our life is headed. Ambiguous grief flies in the face of the idea that grief is a process that we can “go through”, showing just how inadequate that notion really is.
There is, Gina told me, only one thing to do if you’re living with ambiguous grief – and I suspect many of us whose lives have become chaotic, whose support networks are disrupted and whose plans are in tatters may be experiencing some level of ambiguous grief – and that is to find connection. To be in relationship with other human beings, where talking about and exploring the feelings we’re going through is not taboo.
I don’t want to paint an overly romantic picture of storytelling as a panacea for the soul. But I have found solace in old stories, in listening and telling, and in the wider community of story-loving listeners and creatives. They have made things easier for me.
Radio Crick Crack – The Queen of the Court of Claywood Flats
Bringing soul food to the nation during isolation, Radio Crick Crack opens the archive of the Crick Crack Club with recordings of their performers through years. The Queen of the Court of Claywood Flats is a show I put together in Sheffield more than a decade ago, inspired by the demolition of Claywood Flats, the 2007 flood, with glimpses of myth, story and mystery.
You can listen for free, although any money you donate will go to storytellers struggling to sustain an income during the pandemic. It’s at the top of the page!
With thanks to Graham Langley and Birmingham Storytellers as this particular recording was made in the Kitchen Garden Cafe at one of their evenings.
A Recipe for Hope – Birmingham Storytellers – 20th January 2021
And I will be returning to the Birmingham Storytellers on 20th January to join them for an evening of online tales. Whether you’re anywhere near Birmingham or not, hop along on Zoom to hear me and their resident storytellers fill the night with hope:
I’m working with Adverse Camber and Sarah Liisa Wilkinson on a fabulous, one off, online experimental ritual event – Seven Uncanny Candles.
There’s a folk game in Japan where one hundred candles are lit, one hundred stories of the supernatural are told, and after each tale a candle is extinguished so that the room slowly descends into darkness. (It’s called Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai if you want to read more.) Inspired by this custom, we’re going to be telling stories of the weird and supernatural, and invite you all to join us. For the full effect, you’ll need seven candles, a dark room and a Zoom account, but you’ll be able to listen with just Zoom.
The event hasn’t been officially announced yet, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to get the date in your diary. Full information will be coming out shortly. I’m really delighted to be trying this out and I hope you’ll join me for it.
Regular Features – Beeston Tales & Wild About Story
Beeston Tales is this Wednesday, 13th January, on Zoom, with dynamo Katrice Horsley telling tales and troubadour Owen Shiers singing songs. Come along!
And Wild About Story’s “The Storyteller’s Bookclub” is back in 2021, with our first event on 1st February. I’ll be in conversation with Dominic Kelly about Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard. This 1970s travel novel interweaves Matthiessen’s experiences of grief, his exploration of his Buddhist faith in the landscape that gave it birth, his official goal to look at some Himalayan goats and his unofficial yearning to glimpse the elusive snow leopard.
Some of you may be aware of the work I do with researchers, teaching storytelling skills for public engagement. Here’s a blog post about a project I ran for the Political Ecology Network in 2020, written by Judith Krauss.
Apart from that, I’ve been pretty busy with things lately. I’m involved with Equity’s Storytellers Network and we’re exploring Equity’s statement on Cultural Appropriation to make sure it reflects the particular nuances that storytellers have to navigate. Plus it’s January, which is traditionally the time when I ritualistically swear that I won’t leave my tax return so late next year.
May our paths cross in 2021
And until then, all blessings of the New Year to you!
The “Human-ish” Podcast, creation of Dinaay Sharma, is an exploration of the fundamentals of the human experience, whether that be an interview about the nature of the mind or the importance of movement or the role of storytelling.
You can guess which episode I was part of, right?
This is a long, involved discussion, about 90 minutes in total, and it was nice to have the opportunity to dig deep into the my thoughts on the role storytelling in our lives as well as share some of my experiences.
I do wish I’d had something slightly more graceful to say about colonialism and cultural appropriation though. Ahh well! If the Human-ish Podcast has taught me anything, it’s that there’s always room to learn and grow. That and the value of sitting on the floor.
Here’s something exciting! I’m working on a new show at the moment, and it will be having its first outing live, on Zoom, as part of the Strange Times Online Storytelling Club. We’re not even going to charge for a ticket, just ask for donations.
When Tim Ralphs was a child in the 80s he grew up glued to the TV screen, absorbing endless episodes of cartoons. The Heroes were Heroic and Always Victorious! The Villains were Villainous and Always Defeated!
The rest of his life hasn’t followed the same blueprint.
Which means the time is ripe to re-write the scripts. Join Tim for an All Evil Tour of the greatest antagonists of Myth and Legend. We’ll be looking for murky character depth, ingenious schemes and classy dastardliness in a line up that runs from the Cradle of Civilisation to England’s own Legendary Badd’uns.
And we won’t be alone. Our guide will be none other than the most heinous of cartoon villains, the baddie of which all other baddies are pale imitations: Skeletor! Archnemesis of that bland, burly do-gooder He-Man, Skeletor will be our companion and our measuring stick as we assess what the real role of the villain is in our stories and our psyche.
Adult themes and Cartoon Violence.
For those of you looking to make a donation, the best way is via this link: paypal.me/abbiesimmonds
For those of you eager to know how to listen in, the best options are either via Strange Times Online on facebook, where the link will be circulated shortly before the show, or by joining my mailing list using the link below.
In May of 2019, I had the pleasure of being part of the GESCHICHTENOASE – International Storytelling Festival in Switzerland. It was a beautiful festival, “an urban storytelling oasis”, taking place primarily in a flower filled glasshouse in The Old Botanical Garden.
Film-maker Thomas Radlwimmer was on hand to record things and he’s created this video featuring a story adapted from my show “Rebranding Beelzebub.”
After Bedevere’s second attempt to throw Excalibur into the lake, he returned to his King:
‘Lord, please. It’s impossible for me.’
‘Seems impossible, sweet friend.
Remember that Christmas morning the hawthorn
flowered, the day we found Lancelot.
Seemed impossible. But it happened, as if
by giving ourselves again and again
to the unknown we opened to grace, embraced
whatever makes this world new,
Bedevere, remember, the hawk of may,
and the head that speaks, the leaping hare
and the horse that flies from the spray, the spear
bleeding light and the blaze on the hill,
they called me king of adventures, remember
the stag in the hall and the queen of the hive,
the deerhound’s nose, the silver horn,
the salmon in the well, the thorn in winter
we saw flowering. Seemed impossible
but it all happened, the land held
open and whole and green and free
and it happened through us, as if
it were meant to happen.’
From “Arthur”, by Jamie Crawford
From ITV’s “10 things you may not know about the Glastonbury Holy Thorn”
